Mutt drives his motorcycle into the library then slides on the floor, pushing a student on a chair with the wheel, he then asked Indy a question about history. Why doesn't he panic? When your teacher is out mystery solving, artifact hunting, people saving, you know he's going to be out for days on end. Ask a question when you can, because you don't know when he's going to be back.
To many, Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast is a Wall Banger already being known as "Nuking the Fridge". To me, if he had merely gotten in and survived, I would have thought the same. The fact that the fridge was flung through the air, while everything else was disintegrated, and that he came out with barely even a bruise, just tells me that this is Refuge in Audacity. That, or there was still some of the Holy Grail or wrath of the gods coursing through his veins from previous adventures.
Poster artist Drew Struzan said George Lucas wanted the teaser poster for KOTCS to be the shot of Indy's silhouette looking at a mushroom cloud because he loved that image. Paramount Studios wouldn't go for it but Lucas asked Struzan to make a painting for him so he could keep it. Ultimately it wasn't the idea of Indy surviving an atomic blast hiding in a refrigerator that Lucas liked, it was seeing a hero of the early half of the 20th century witnessing and juxtaposed against the nuclear nightmare of the latter half.
Indy is very much a pulp action hero, and pulp action heroes pretty much died out after World War II, replaced with metaphors for this new horror humanity had unleashed upon itself (in B-movies and television serials). Ancient gods and magical artifacts went out of fashion after humans split the atom. Indiana Jones, in this film, is a man who has outlived the era he was made for. Indiana Jones silhouetted against a mushroom cloud is viscerally showing that the world has moved on without him, and he and the kinds of stories he works in don't fit anymore, which is the film itself. . . it's all an ill fit, entirely by design.
It took me a bit to reconcile the fact that Indy was going after aliens rather than religious artifacts. But then I remembered that The Indiana Jones series was meant to be a throwback to the adventure serials of the 1930's. Pulp stories from that era was often based on magical artifacts and ancient legend. The 1950s saw a new fascination in outer space. So this story, set in the 50s, is reflective of 50s pop culture — with a focus on the Space Age and visitors from other worlds. It also shows a clear contrast with the villains in the previous films: the Nazis collected religious artifacts because they believed God was on their side; the Soviets were, in theory, an atheist society — they'd be less inclined towards religious artifacts, and more on scientific and psychic phenomena.
Building on the above, the killer ants are more than the usual creepy crawlies that often appear in the series; they're a subtle homage to Them!
Another scene in KOTCS often criticized for being ridiculous/out of place/etc. is the one where Mutt ends up in the treetops with those monkeys. But, this troper was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark the other day, and what did he see? - a scene with Indy and Marion wandering through a marketplace, holding a monkey, and jokingly talking about it as if it was their son!
Marion's son goes by the nickname "Mutt"...which seems like a generally scruffy Rebel Without a Cause name until you think about who his father turns out to be. Henry Jones Jr. named himself Indiana after the family dog.
In the library scene, Indy tells the student the he should get out of the library to become a good archaeologist. This contradicts a line from The Last Crusade when he tells his students that 70% of all archaeology is done in the library. But that's just it! It's the last 30% that counts!
To be fair, in Last Crusade Indy does end up unearthing an ancient burial site while inside a library, so he was proven right back then, just as he was proven wrong that "X never, ever marks the spot."
The fact is, after 50+ years of having adventures around the world searching for relics of different cultures, getting involved in espionage in two world wars and witnessing first-hand the power of three major religionsnote though one of the items is in two of the religions, the only thing that could possibly surprise Indiana Jones by this point in his life would have to be aliens (and having a son he never knew about).
At the end of the film, Indiana notices that they aliens have collected artifacts from around the world. The temple they are in is implied to be three or four thousand years old, or "as old as the pyramids". Indiana feels a connection to the aliens because he says they are archaeologists (evidenced by their collection of ancient artifacts from India, China, Europe, etc.) but if the collection is really thousands of years old, those artifacts wouldn't have been ancient when the aliens collected them. The aliens would have been more like contemporary art collectors.
When Mutt uses a snake to pull Indy from the quicksand, he tells his father that the animal is a "rat snake." Though it may not have really been a rat snake in real life, the writing seems intentional. Whereas Indy fears snakes, his father feared rats. In turn, the snake symbolizes a combination of Indy's and his father's fears. Having just learned from Marion that he is Mutt's father, Indy must now share his father's fear (seen in Crusade) of losing his progeny. The startling revelation of the "rat snake" illustrates how Indy has had a paternal revelation thrown onto him suddenly. Now, his long-standing fears of a savage and dangerous world are blended with the paternal fears of having a son to look after, and having to prevent that son from dying in said dangerous world.
Fridge Horror
During the skirmish at the Area 51 warehouse, several of the storage crates are damaged, including the one that holds the Lost Ark. Keeping the events of the first film in mind, what if the Ark's lid came off?
for him so he could keep it. Ultimately it wasn't the idea of Indy surviving an atomic blast hiding in a refrigerator that Lucas liked, it was seeing a hero of the early half of the 20th century witnessing and juxtaposed against the nuclear nightmare of the latter half.